When We Talk About the History of Translation, We Should Think of the Theories and Names That Emerged at Its Different Periods
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When we talk about the history of translation, we should think of the theories and names that emerged at its different periods. In fact, each era is characterized by specific changes in translation history, but these changes differ from one place to another. For example, the developments of translation in the western world are not the same as those in the Arab world, as each nation knew particular incidents that led to the birth of particular theories. So, what are the main changes that marked translation history in both the West and the Arab world? a. Translation in the western world For centuries, people believed in the relation between translation and the story of the tower of Babel in the Book of Genesis. According to the Bible, the descendants of Noah decided, after the great flood, to settle down in a plain in the land of Shinar. There, they committed a great sin. Instead of setting up a society that fits God's will, they decided to challenge His authority and build a tower that could reach Heaven. However, this plan was not completed, as God, recognizing their wish, regained control over them through a linguistic stratagem. He caused them to speak different languages so as not to understand each other. Then, he scattered them all over the earth. After that incident, the number of languages increased through diversion, and people started to look for ways to communicate, hence the birth of translation (Abdessalam Benabdelali, 2006) (1). The Tower of Babel forms the focus of a story told in the Book of Genesis of the Bible. According to the story, a united humanity of the generations following the Great Flood, speaking a single language and migrating from the east, came to the land where they resolved to build a city with a tower "whose top may ,(שנער :of Shinar (Hebrew reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.” God came down to see what they did and said: "They are one people and have one language, and nothing will be withheld from them which they purpose to do." "Come, let us go down and confound their speech." And so God scattered them upon the face of the Earth, and confused their languages, so that they would not be able to return to each other, and they left off building the city, which was called Babel "because God there confounded the language of all the Earth." The Tower of Babel has often been associated with known structures, notably the Etemenanki, a ziggurat dedicated to the Mesopotamian god Marduk by Nabopolassar, king of Babylonia (c. 610 BC). The Great Ziggurat of Babylon base was square (not round), 91 metres (300 ft) in height, and demolished by Alexander the Great. A Sumerian story with some similar elements is told in Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta. Actually, with the birth of translation studies and the increase of research in the domain, people started to get away from this story of Babel, and they began to look for specific dates and figures that mark the periods of translation history. Researchers mention that writings on translation go back to the Romans. Eric Jacobson claims that translating is a Roman invention (see McGuire: 1980) (2). Cicero and Horace (first century BC) were the first theorists who distinguished between word-for-word translation and sense-for-sense translation. Their comments on translation practice influenced the following generations of translation up to the twentieth century. Another period that knew a changing step in translation development was marked by St Jerome (fourth century CE). "His approach to translating the Greek Septuagint Bible into Latin would affect later translations of the scriptures." (Munday, 2001) (3) Later on, the translation of the Bible remained subject to many conflicts between western theories and ideologies of translation for more than a thousand years. Moreover, these conflicts on Bible translation were intensified with the coming of the Reformation in the sixteenth century, when "translation came to be used as a weapon in both dogmatic and political conflicts as nation states began to emerge and the centralization of the Church started to weaken evidence in linguistic terms by the decline of Latin as a universal language." (McGuire, 1980) (4) Needless to say that the invention of printing techniques in the fifteenth century developed the field of translation and helped in the appearance of early theorists. For instance, Etienne Dolet (1509-46), whose heretic mistranslation of one of Plato's dialogues, the phrase "rien du tout" (nothing at all) that showed his disbelief in immortality, led to his execution. The seventeenth century knew the birth of many influential theorists such as Sir John Denhom (1615-69), Abraham Cowley (1618-67), John Dryden (1631-1700), who was famous for his distinction between three types of translation; metaphrase, paraphrase and imitation, and Alexander Pope (1688-1744). In the eighteenth century, the translator was compared to an artist with a moral duty both to the work of the original author and to the receiver. Moreover, with the enhancement of new theories and volumes on translation process, the study of translation started to be systematic; Alexander Frayer Tayler's volume Principles of Translation (1791) is a case in point. The nineteenth century was characterized by two conflicting tendencies; the first considered translation as a category of thought and saw the translator as a creative genius, who enriches the literature and language into which he is translating, while the second saw him through the mechanical function of making a text or an author known (McGuire) (5). This period of the nineteenth century knew also the enhancement of Romanticism, the fact that led to the birth of many theories and translations in the domain of literature, especially poetic translation. An example of these translations is the one used by Edward Fitzgerald (1809-1863) for Rubaiyat Omar Al-Khayyam (1858). In the second half of the twentieth century, studies on translation became an important course in language teaching and learning at schools. What adds to its value is the creation of a variety of methods and models of translation. For instance, the grammar-translation method studies the grammatical rules and structures of foreign languages. The cultural model is also a witness for the development of translation studies in the period. It required in translation not only a word-for-word substitution, but also a cultural understanding of the way people in different societies think (Mehrach, 1977) (6). With this model, we can distinguish between the ethnographical-semantic method and the dynamic equivalent method. Another model that appears in the period is text-based translation model, which focuses on texts rather than words or sentences in translation process. This model includes a variety of sub-models: the interpretative model, the text linguistic model and models of translation quality assessments that in turn provide us with many models such as those of Riess, Wilss, Koller, House, North and Hulst. The period is also characterized by pragmatic and systematic approach to the study of translation. The most famous writings and figures that characterize the twenties are those of Jean-Paul Vinay and Darbelnet, who worked on a stylistic comparative study of French and English (1958), Alfred Malblanc (1963), George Mounin (1963), John C. Catford. (1965), Eugene Nida (1964), who is affected by the Chomskyan generative grammar in his theories of translation, De Beaugrand who writes a lot about translation, and many others who worked and still work for the development of the domain. Nowadays, translation research started to take another path, which is more automatic. The invention of the internet, together with the new technological developments in communication and digital materials, has increased cultural exchanges between nations. This leads translators to look for ways to cope with these changes and to look for more practical techniques that enable them to translate more and waste less. They also felt the need to enter the world of cinematographic translation, hence the birth of audiovisual translation. The latter technique, also called screen translation, is concerned with the translation of all kinds of TV programs, including films, series, and documentaries. This field is based on computers and translation software programs, and it is composed of two methods: dubbing and subtitling. In fact, audiovisual translation marks a changing era in the domain of translation. In short, translation has a very wide and rich history in the West. Since its birth, translation was the subject of a variety of research and conflicts between theorists. Each theorist approaches it according to his viewpoint and field of research, the fact that gives its history a changing quality. b. Translation in the Arab world The early translations used in Arabic are dated back to the time of Syrians (the first half of the second century AD), who translated into Arabic a large heritage that belongs to the era of paganism (Bloomshark 1921: 10-12, qtd by Addidaoui, 2000) (7). Syrians were influenced in their translations by the Greek ways of translation. Syrian's translations were more literal and faithful to the original (Ayad 1993: 168, qtd by Addidaoui, 2000) (8). According to Addidaoui, Jarjas was one of the best Syrian translators; his famous Syrian translation of Aristotle's book In The World was very faithful and close to the original. Additionally, the time of the prophet Mohamed (peace be upon him) is of paramount importance for translation history. The spread of Islam and the communication with non- Arabic speaking communities as Jews, Romans and others pushed the prophet to look for translators and to encourage the learning of foreign languages.